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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29498169">how to break the head off a china doll</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/yelenavasilyevna/pseuds/yelenavasilyevna'>yelenavasilyevna</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Angst, Canon Era, Dueling, F/M, Gen, anatole dies au lmao, hélène goes a little feral good for her, i'm war and peace posting again :'), takes place after the failed elopement</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:07:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,086</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29498169</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/yelenavasilyevna/pseuds/yelenavasilyevna</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He's young,</i> Pierre thinks, inanely, staring down at the bloody ruin of Anatole Kuragin's face. Has he always been so young?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fyodor "Fedya" Ivanovich Dolokhov/Elena "Hélène" Vasilyevna Kuragina</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>how to break the head off a china doll</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i hope ur happy wren &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He didn't mean it. That's what he wants to say. He hadn't meant to. It was only a threat, an angry threat. He barely remembers picking up the stone. Pierre feels weightless, like his body is not his own, his fury evaporating into cold, sickly emptiness. He realizes the heavy paperweight is still in his hand and his fingers give out, it falls to the floor with a hollow crack that deafens in the silence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>He's young,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Pierre thinks, inanely, staring down at the bloody ruin of Anatole Kuragin's face. Has he always been so young? He hadn't seemed it, when it was Natasha at stake. But now he looks hardly more than a boy. Pierre tries to remember what has happened, but it doesn't make sense. His memory is an opaque blur of white hot rage. He can't connect the boy in front of him to the man he'd wanted to kill.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Has </span>
  </em>
  <span>killed. The man that he has killed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pierre stumbles backwards, like he's been hit, reeling with the impact of a phantom gunshot. Behind him, a woman screams. For a moment he wonders if she's been shot, too. </span>
  <em>
    <span>What else could make you scream like that?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Anatole—” She shoves him out of the way and he parts like velvet curtains, all his strength abandoned. “No,” she's saying, she's saying to no one. “Tolya, please. Please.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Please </span>
  <em>
    <span>what? </span>
  </em>
  <span>He's trying to figure it out when the bloody stone hurdles past his face, missing his head by inches. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>GET OUT!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hélène— Wait, I—” He didn't </span>
  <em>
    <span>mean it—</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Murderer. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Monster</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” She throws something else, a heavy leatherbound book that hits his chest and knocks the wind from his lungs. He doesn't see her take the pistol from her brother's body until she has it aimed at his head. Her hands are shaking. Her face shines with blood. “Get out.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Somehow he knows she'd pull the trigger. He wants to let her. Instead, he flees. As he turns his back, he hears her collapse, the sound of a woman's body hitting the floor.</span>
</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She appears on his doorstep and Dolokhov is sure she is a ghost. She doesn't look like anyone he recognizes— who is this woman? In Hélène's clothing, with red eyes and crumpled silks and loose blonde hair that clings to her skin with sweat. Holding a gun.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Teach me,” she says, it's all she says, her voice is raw. Someone has scrubbed off her polish with a horsehair brush, more exposed than he's ever seen her. She wears more armor in his bed than she does now, stripped of something more than clothing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where's Anatole?” He'll have run home to her, by now, crying about his stupid girl. He'd known it was a bad idea. He should've stopped it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anatole is very difficult to stop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn't answer him. “Teach me to shoot, Fedya.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"What the hell?” </span>
  <em>
    <span>Now?</span>
  </em>
  <span> He could slam the door in her face. He doesn't. She looks frightened. She's not wearing a coat, he realizes, like she left in a hurry, shivering against Moscow winter in the short, gauzy sleeves of an evening gown. He tries to get her to come inside, out of the cold where he can try to get some sense out of her. She shakes him off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please," she begs. Hélène never begs. “Do this for me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She cries out when Dolokhov grabs her wrist and wrenches the gun from her hand, either from pain or indignation he's not sure. He turns so she'll have to follow him inside. He lights a lamp. “Anatole wants to try again.” Just a hunch, really, but Anatole is stubborn like that. He puts the gun in a drawer. He doesn't intend to give it back. “Is that why you want to shoot him?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even half frozen to death, God knows Princess Kuragina won't think to make a fire. He kneels by the hearth. "What did he do, then?” She's probably mad about the elopement, angry that her idiot brother remains an idiot. Angry that she had helped him. Maybe even angry he was going to leave. “Hélène?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he turns to look over his shoulder he realizes she is crying.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dolokhov has never seen Hélène cry. The first flickering light of the fire catches on her cheekbones, silent tears on the finely carved face that makes her look so much like Anatole. Her lips are dark where she has kissed something red. She is so fragile, like this, she who has always been immovable, untouchable, divine. Now she is made of muslin and glass. She might shatter. Before he knows what he's doing he's standing in front of her, pressing his hand to the side of her face like he's checking if she's really there. She is so cold. “Where's Anatole, Hélène.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She kisses him. He understands. That's the only way she knows to be held.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” he says, prying her off with a blunt firmness that isn't cruel. Something is different. They both know it. Something has changed. Hélène Kuragina is crying. God, </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>this Hélène? Can this be the same woman, this breakable little girl? “Lelya,” he says. Hélène would hate his gentleness, but this woman requires it. Whoever she is. “Tell me what happened.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He killed him,” she mumbles. Her beautiful face is dusted in blood, her brother's blood, which is hers as well. “He's dead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He's dead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That can't be right,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Dolokhov thinks, stupidly. She's wrong. Anatole can't die, he's too </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Anatole has more life in him than anyone he's ever met, more than the both of them combined. In a moment, he'll throw open the door, and say </span>
  <em>
    <span>you were really worried, weren't you?, </span>
  </em>
  <span>with that stupid, arrogant look on his stupid, arrogant face. They'll be angry. Hélène might not even talk to him, for a few days, nursing her fury with his bottles and his bed. But she'll forgive him. They always do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then he looks Hélène in the eye. And he knows.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She buries her face in his shoulder and he lets her, too stunned to notice she has never done this either. He wraps her in his arms without thinking, his eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance. Her skin is like ice, but it does nothing to dull his senses. He is every inch aware. “Pierre?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She nods against him. “I'll kill him.” Mumbled into the linen of his shirt, it carries less weight than it might've. “I'll— I'll shoot him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your own husband?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don't </span>
  <em>
    <span>call him that.” </span>
  </em>
  <span>She pushes herself back. “He's no husband of mine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You haven't killed him </span>
  <em>
    <span>yet.</span>
  </em>
  <span>"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will.” Stronger this time. Hélène still has some strength in her. She never could lose it completely.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No you won't.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You'll stop me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I'll do it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Does he mean to promise that? She's looking at him like maybe she hasn't heard him right, her hand twisted in the collar of his shirt like she needs something to hold on to. “You—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I'll challenge him. I'm a better shot.” A matter of practicality. He doesn't need to think about it any more than that. “You'll get yourself killed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I want to do it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know.” He's known for a long time she's not so nice as she looks. “You've never shot a gun, Hélène.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So </span>
  <em>
    <span>teach </span>
  </em>
  <span>me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Do you want to shoot him, or do you want him dead?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I want—” She stops because the answer is not the right one. What she wants is revenge. And she's willing to go down with him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?" he asks, but he knows. "You want me to let you kill yourself for Anatole?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her eyes are steel, but her hands are shaking. She doesn't deny it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you were stupid, I'd believe you didn't know. Pierre will kill you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not if I kill him first.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jesus Christ, are you really </span>
  <span>this</span>
  <span> prideful?” </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yes. </span>
  </em>
  <span>But he knows it's not only that. Hélène didn't come to him because she thought he was her best option; She came because, without Anatole, he is her </span>
  <em>
    <span>only </span>
  </em>
  <span>option. She has poured herself into the hands of one man, a man too irresponsible to be trusted, and the man has gotten himself killed. Now she is spilling onto the floor. "Let me do it."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He shot you before.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He won't get lucky twice.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“All the bastard does is get lucky.” She closes her eyes. Dolokhov thinks of a story she told him once, about the night of her wedding. She was laughing, when she told him, three drinks in and down to her chemise, </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh he's wretched, Fyodor. No, believe me, nearly as bad as you. I mean it. Now make your hands useful already and pour me another. </span>
  </em>
  <span>The dainty little clatter of her earrings, which she's left on, for some reason, even with the rest of herself now piled on the floor. She knocks back her drink like a man.</span>
  <em>
    <span> God, you ought to see him drunk.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He's dead?” Dolokhov asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She can't open her eyes. “Anatole…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He pulls her back to him, and he's glad that for once she doesn't resist. Hélène never seems small to him, but she does now, an unstable thing that might collapse if he let go. He only knows one way to comfort her and even he knows that's not right so he only stands there, her face in his chest, feeling her nails dig into his neck and letting it happen because he knows she has more violence in her than that. A little pain is only grounding. Physical. Physical pain is something he understands. It is something he can take.</span>
</p>
<p><span>Neither of them say </span><em><span>I'm sorry. </span></em><span>Instead, he says,</span> <span>“Come to bed with me.” Neither of them say </span><em><span>I loved him. </span></em><span>Instead, he wraps her in his greatcoat, and when she falls asleep in his arms, he tells himself it's only because she's cold.</span></p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her father is angry she didn't tell him. As if she would've come running, with Anatole's blood still on her hands. As if he wouldn't have told her to clean herself up, first. Clean herself up before bothering him. As if there was anyone she'd want to see less. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This morning she woke up in Dolokhov’s bed, having given nothing to be there. She knows what this means, that she chose to trust the kindness of a cruel man over the understanding of her own father. Dolokhov is cruel, but he has never asked her to pretend, to be someone she is not. He has never asked her to wash away the evidence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She comes home in yesterday’s dress and a coat that is not hers, is too big for her, smells like ashes. Anatole’s body is cold. Someone has cleaned him, made him up to look almost peaceful. But they cannot disguise the gash in his forehead, cannot erase the damage. It is all they can do to wrap it in gauze and pray for his sins.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She finds some of his clothing in her closet. She will need it, for what she has planned. She slips a ring off his finger— it is silver, engraved along the inside with his name, </span>
  <em>
    <span>their </span>
  </em>
  <span>name, </span>
  <em>
    <span>KURAGIN </span>
  </em>
  <span>in elegant letters she presses to her lips. Then she makes herself turn away. It is better to remember him alive. She needs no more memories of his death. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Downstairs, her father is standing in her drawing room. Waiting for her. He looks so small.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where were you?” he asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Out,” she says. She feels reckless. She has nothing to lose.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You should've come to me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What does it matter?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He was my son.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He was my </span>
  <em>
    <span>brother.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” And more brother than he ever was son. Anatole had always been a part of her, almost physically, a limb, a vital organ. To Vassily, he was property. And not worth much.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Pierre will be arrested. You'll be disgraced.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Me?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vassily turns away, like he can't stand the sight of her, and just that much would've crippled her, once. There was a time she would’ve have begged him for forgiveness. Now, it only angers her. He should have to look her in the eye</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Pierre ought to be challenged,” he says. He means to make a widow of her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dolokhov has challenged him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vassily frowns. “Who?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fyodor Dolokhov.” </span>
  <em>
    <span>My lover, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she almost adds, </span>
  <em>
    <span>the man that bastard shot. Don’t you remember? </span>
  </em>
  <span>“They're to duel tomorrow dawn.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“One of Anatole's scoundrel friends? It should be Ippolit. It ought to be someone respectable.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It ought to be me.</span>
  </em>
  <span> But a gun is more than he deserves. Anatole wasn’t allowed anything so graceful as a gunshot. His avengeance should be bloody. She'd like to tear at his throat with her fingernails, to bash in his head with a marble tabletop. She'd like to be a man, God, just this once, just long enough to show him the wrath she is capable of. Hélène is tired of using her mouth to smile. She wants to be a creature of teeth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ippolit will lose,” she says instead. “Dolokhov won't.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vassily presses his lips together. He's getting old, her father, an old man, balding and tired, grasping on to his last shreds of legacy. It's her legacy, now, not his, and the realization packs her chest with something like disgust— his son murdered, and he talks of </span>
  <em>
    <span>reputation? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Hélène has spent her life trying to earn her father's approval but suddenly she can't remember why. For what? What is he worth, this pathetic shell of a man? This shadowed perversion of a family? Anatole was her only family</span>
  <em>
    <span>. </span>
  </em>
  <span>No one really loved Anatole except her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No one really loved her except Anatole.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you know about this?” her father asks. “This business with the Rostovs?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn't hesitate. “Yes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks at her, and she can see his hardened face crack down the center. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Good, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she thinks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Let him break. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She wants to see him shatter. “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There are so many things that you don't know.” Hélène has never spoken to her father like this, she's never dared. But she is invincible, in her grief. He can't hurt her now. “You know nothing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He slaps her for her insolence. She doesn't feel the sting.</span>
</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He tells Pierre not to go.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It's not worth it,” he says. “Leave the city.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Masons and his money will protect him if he leaves, if he lays low. It's the smart thing to do, the </span>
  <em>
    <span>only </span>
  </em>
  <span>thing to do. If he takes the challenge, there's nothing anyone can do to keep Fyodor Dolokhov from putting a bullet through his head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But it's not about that,” mutters Pierre. Though he can't say what it </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>about. “I have to.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Andrei is a soldier. He has seen what a field looks like, after a battle. When the canons stop and the world is still, when the ground is littered in bodies and ash. There is a certain sort of solitude. A certain sort of cold.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He returned to Moscow this morning and told Pierre he had expected this. He isn't sure he had. But he decides that he has asked too much of Natasha. He knows that women grow lonely, he knows the will of their love is easily swayed. He tells Pierre he wishes her all that is well. And he wishes never to see her again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pierre looks terrible. He hasn't slept in days. He is pale, and shaking, he slumps at his desk and mutters of nothing. They are at the Bald Hills, his wife has banished him from his home. Pierre tells him what he has heard from servants: that for hours she wouldn't let anyone touch her brother's body. That she bore him out herself, slowly, laboriously, until his blood was smeared along her arms, her gown, a feral breed of woman turned to madness. That she laid him out in her own bed and forbade the servants to move him; swore that if Pierre was allowed inside she'd hang the man who'd opened the door. The story chills him. Andrei has never seen Countess Bezukhov anything less than statuesque— lovely, but immobile. Cold. This image is something else entirely. One would have thought her the murderer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Andrei doesn't ask him why he did it. He has known his friend a long time. He knows he is capable of things he would not believe of himself. Andrei can tell that he does not quite believe it still.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go to the country,” Andrei says. “Prince Vassily will be reasonable. He cannot possibly try to excuse his son of this.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Pierre won't. Andrei thinks he is punishing himself. So he agrees to be his second. When a man decides he deserves his fate, he is already lost.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Artificial dawn rises before the true sun. The morning is cool and bright with moon that reflects off the curtain of still-falling snow. Above them, a comet stains the night, constant and ominous, though of what exactly it is an omen Andrei couldn't say. It is the silver tension of vendetta; It hangs in the air like murky dew.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the distance he sees two men. He expects the second to come but it's Dolokhov himself who approaches, with his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat, a grim smile on his face. “Bezukhov. I didn't expect to meet you on the field again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pierre falters for something to say. Andrei steps in: “I'll set the barriers.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He thinks maybe it is dangerous to leave them alone, but it cannot be more dangerous than the duel, and so he walks on, plants the first sword into the ground. The blade glints, throws a spear of starlight into his eyes and for a moment he is blinded. Dolokhov is saying something behind him, but really he is saying nothing; He was Anatole's friend, Andrei remembers, a notable of that unsightly crowd that used to rile Pierre into their mischief. In another life, maybe Pierre would've been with them still, would've helped Anatole elope as Dolokhov had. That is, a life where Andrei hadn't gotten to him first.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Would that have been for the best? It is difficult to think it might've saved a life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It might've saved two.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He plunges the second sword into the snow and does not think about what they are here to do. When he returns, both men have long since fallen silent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“To your paces, Captain.” For once, Dolokhov takes an order.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He turns to Pierre. “You can still leave.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.” He turns his weapon over in his hands. “I can’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Andrei is thinking about the comet when Pierre takes his face and kisses him. Startled, he can only stand there, wondering if this is an apology.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He pulls away. “—I'm sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.” Andrei sets his hand on top of Pierre's. He feels the cold metal of the gun. “Good luck.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later, he will regret not kissing him again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Andrei checks the paces. He counts them off. To watch them advance is to watch a bolder roll down a hill and so he does not. He looks away. He hopes God or Pierre will forgive him. Their footsteps fall heavy in the snow, nearly as deep as their knees, and Andrei sees again Dolokhov’s second. The man is watching intently; What Andrei can see of his shadowed face is a precise instrument of focus, narrow and sharp. In the corner of his eye, Dolokhov is nearly to the barrier. He raises his gun. Then the stranger turns his head, and Andrei feels his throat turn leaden.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As the gunshot sounds, he is looking into the eyes of Anatole Kuragin.</span>
</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha learns he is dead and wonders why she is not. She doesn't want to be, not really, but it seems now as though she has cheated some certain fate, like she made a pact with the devil and her soul has slipped through his fingers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He is dead because of her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She shrouds herself in a quilt, ignores Sonya, ignores Marya, thinks that maybe if only she is very still and very quiet it will all slip away. She will wake up from this dream and all will be well, and Andrei will be home… </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh, Andrei. She's spoiled that as well. She buries her face deeper into her pillow. How has she managed to ruin her life already? So young? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Two</span>
  </em>
  <span> lives, she reminds herself: two lives are over. All because she couldn’t keep her promises.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What was it all for? Did she love Anatole? She thinks she did. But now that he is dead, he exists only in her memory. A memory can do no wrong. His memory is a beautiful creature that whisked her out of loneliness, that for a few days was everything lovely in the world. And gone again so soon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha expects Pierre, hopes for Andrei. Neither of them come. Instead, a week after Anatole is dead, it is a woman in black that visits her, so plainly dressed and ornamented that Natasha does not immediately recognize her as the Countess Bezukhova. She does not know if the sight ought to anger her, or hearten her, but in truth she cannot summon any reaction at all, standing like a marionette in the entranceway, suspended by the finest of threads. Hélène stands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Countess,” she says. The thinness of her voice does not escape notice, as if her throat is raw, from crying or disuse she cannot say. And yet, she doesn’t look weak— she has a widow’s quiet dignity, her blonde hair in a simple knot, no jewelry but a silver ring. “I am glad to see you looking so well.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha knows she does not look well. And while she cannot say Hélène does either, she is at least solid, grim with determination. For her part, Natasha is a phantom in a white dressing gown, as if at any moment a strong wind might carry her away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sit with me,” says Hélène, and Natasha finds herself obeying. “Anatole would’ve called this dowdy,” she says, noticing Natasha’s eyes on her dress. “He would’ve hated it, truth be told. But we don’t really wear mourning for the sake of the dead, do we?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hélène’s words are easy but her demeanor is not entirely kind, not entirely gentle. She isn’t accusing, either, but it occurs to Natasha that she has come here to appraise her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I am the woman her brother died for. </span>
  </em>
  <span>And now she wants to know why.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” she blurts. “I’m so sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hélène nods. “Thank you.” There is a silence. “I am sorry too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It surprises Natasha to hear her apologize. She had never imagined it possible. “What for?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“For Anatole.” Sorry he is dead? Sorry he pursued her? Sorry that she helped him? She doesn’t say. Natasha can only imagine all three. And more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ll have heard about Pierre.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Will he go to jail?” Natasha had feared that. The idea of losing not only Andrei but Pierre too was almost too much to bear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hélène frowned. “My love, he is dead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She might’ve said anything next, Natasha couldn’t hear her for the ringing in her ears, the rush of magma that drowned out all else. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He is dead. </span>
  </em>
  <span>All at once the strings that have been holding her up are snapped in two and she collapses into Hélène, buries her face in the neck of her black dress, clings to this near stranger, who was for a few nights her friend.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then Natasha feels Hélène’s arms encircle her. Slowly, hesitant. But she has never been more grateful for anything. She cries.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Natasha…” Hélène mutters. “Darling, please.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Distantly she knows this is ridiculous. Pierre was </span>
  <em>
    <span>her </span>
  </em>
  <span>husband, she shouldn’t be comforting some other girl, a girl she barely knows. But Natasha needs her to. She cannot face the world yet. She cannot be alone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How…?” she finally asks, when she recovers the strength to sit up, though not quite the strength to look her in the eye.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A duel,” Hélène says. And then, as if an apology, “He killed Anatole.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know.” She might’ve figured. “It’s all my fault."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hélène says, “You’ll drive yourself mad."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Who else is there to blame?” Anatole, but he is dead. Pierre, but he is too. Andrei, for leaving her? That isn’t fair, she knows that isn't fair. She is the only one left.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She says nothing. They sit in silence, women in the wake of dead men, angry men, lovers and brothers and boys.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hélène takes her hand.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>oh boy I'm on my war and peace bullshit again!! anyways if you leave a comment I'll literally live off that high forever</p></blockquote></div></div>
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